Interesting books, and news items about books and periodicals, particularly with respect to political and social issues. Since May, 2016, many of my larger book reviews have been put on a hosted Wordpress site; so now this blog emphasizes previews, interviews with authors, booklets, large periodical articles, and literary business issues. Note: no one pays me for these reviews; they are not "endorsements"!

Monday, May 11, 2015

Luca Rossi: "The Branches of Time" (Volume I): what if time were like the other dimensions available to us from string theory?

Title: “The Branches of Time” (First Volume)

Author: Luca Rossi

Publication: Self (apparently, no company listed), ISBN
978-149743868-2, 151 pages, paper, 46 short chapters (Chapter 40 is the shortest book chapter of all time).

I typically don’t respond too well to authors or filmmakers “pushing”
their work directly to me on social media, but I did take this author up this
time and ordered the fantasy novel from Amazon.

The author, apparently born in Italy, seems to live and
write in Los Angeles today, and be near Tinseltown. He has a collection of
short stories called “Galactic Energies” set in another universe with different
laws of physics. And this novel appears
to be the first of series. The author appears to be interested in developing
fantasy or science fiction series for cable channels.

In my own mind, there are differences between fantasy and
science fiction, and gradations within science fiction where the writer
proposes a scenario that just could happen, if some day we have some new
epiphany on the way cosmology really works.
A novel or movie, for example, could propose what it would be like if
aliens really landed publicly and if life (including our political and
religious cultures, and economic systems) really could keep going on as
usual. That would take some of the
sensationalism out of a film like “Independence Day” (1996). That’s why I like television series like NBC’s
“The Event” or ABC’s “Flash Forward”.

J.R. Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings” (I do have a
hardbound copy) is fantasy, but Clive Barker’s “Imajica” is science fiction by
this characterization, as the latter imagines Earth’s suddenly (or more
gradually) coming into direct contact with four other planets (one of which
houses “Heaven”).

In fantasy, we live in a parallel world, with no contact
with Earth, but with beings similar to us.
Maybe it’s another solar system, or maybe it’s in another universe – and
I’ve talked about “multiverse” here before (March 7).

In Mr. Rossi’s novel, we do seem to be in a parallel
universe, with different laws of physics, at least slightly. It’s possible to imagine a universe without
the “weak force” (called “weakless”) with the consequence that there could be
no heavy radioactive elements. It might
be peaceful. But in Rossi’s universe,
time behaves more like a spatial dimension (our of string theory); it is
sometimes possible to go backwards and change things.

Mr. Rossi seems concerned about the moral consequences of
such an idea. The novel starts with an apocalypse. Most of the people on an
island state of Turios (on a planet that seems to have a mild, Mediterranean
climate) have suddenly been killed and their corpses are disappearing. The
three main survivors are a knight Bashinor, his wife Lil, and a priestess
Miril. The entire kingdom, Isk, is ruled
by an evil King Beanor whose values sound more or less like those of ISIS
today. There are wizards and magicians
who control some of the military capacities.

Bashinor feels his own manhood is threatened – and the book
makes a lot of how important the possibility of permanent lineage is for many
men for marital sex to work reliably. In
that sense, the book reflects, in a curious way, the culture war debate about
marriage here on Earth. (Do other
planets have traditional marriage?) Priestesses don’t sleep with husbands, or
even former spouses. It’s possible to be
born as a priest or priestess, or to go through some cleansing ritual to become
one. (I have to recall a friend in NYC
back in the 1970s who called one of his cats “The High Priestess”, who really
liked me.)

Later, though, the big picture emerges. The magicians have the ability to rewind
time, and remove people from past existence (which equates to a kind of
permanent existence in Stephen Hawking’s concept of space-time). This means that the people who loved you may
never have existed, in this alternate universe.
Toward the end, Bashinor has to contemplate the relationship between Lil
and Miril, which seems lesbian. Yet, he
can prove that his manhood survives, as will his progeny.

The ending of the book is curious, but probably only because
there is a sequel.

The intimate scenes are explicit in spots (rather like that
of an “R” movie), and the descriptive technique and metaphors reminding one of
Clive Barker.

A list of all the characters would help, as would a drawing of the island and the geography of the island and the entire kingdom.

Links

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Since the 1990s I have been very involved with fighting the military "don't ask don't tell" policy for gays in the military, and with First Amendment issues. Best contact is 571-334-6107 (legitimate calls; messages can be left; if not picked up retry; I don't answer when driving) Three other url's: doaskdotell.com, billboushka.com johnwboushka.com Links to my URLs are provided for legitimate content and user navigation purposes only.
My legal name is "John William Boushka" or "John W. Boushka"; my parents gave me the nickname of "Bill" based on my middle name, and this is how I am generally greeted. This is also the name for my book authorship. On the Web, you can find me as both "Bill Boushka" and "John W. Boushka"; this has been the case since the late 1990s. Sometimes I can be located as "John Boushka" without the "W." That's the identity my parents dealt me in 1943!

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